Dave Winer responds to my copyright rant:
“The glitch in Ritter’s rant is the assumption that people would respect the copyright on the source. I doubt they would. Competition is good, but let’s have some barriers to entry.”
It’s a glitch, alright, but not mine. :-) Copyright didn’t exist prior to 1710, and is a result of the rise of mass reproduction technologies and distribution architectures. However, those technologies were unwieldy, expensive, and time-consuming.
The glitch Dave identifies is the fundamental flaw of copyright itself: the legal concept of copyright was never designed to contend with the technological environment we have today. Prior to the last thirty or so years, the cost of reproduction/redistribution technology was so prohibitive that the idea of “respecting” copyright was moot — the average consumer couldn’t afford to violate copyright.
The long term solution probably isn’t to wage a “War on Piracy,” which is what we — or, at least, Congress, the RIAA, and others — have been doing. I’m not sure what the long term solution is, but like the “War on Drugs,” the current approach of legislating respect or techically enforcing it is likely only to result in rapid-fire, poorly thought-out legislation and technology that impinges on the legitimate rights of consumers and diminishes the public good. In the long run, it costs us all more than would be lost.
Given that, I have to ask myself if copyright makes sense in our current environment? Was it ever a Good Idea™? And the best answer I can come up with is “I’m not sure.” I think it might turn out that copyright was just a 300-year blip in legal history.
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More about Lessig (see earlier post): Dave Winer (of Scripting News) objects to Lessig’s comparison (in a recent Wired article) of copyrighted novels and copyrighted software. Dave says: “You can not see how Hemingway wrote, you can only see the words he published, the publication does not reveal the process. Similarly with software, students are free to study the published work….Further, I can sing a song I heard on the radio, but with published source, anyone would be able to sing the song as well as the person who created it.”
It’s Dave who’s got the analogy backward. more in the Rants section >>>>>
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Ben Brown Is Driving. Ben is updating a blog from his cell phone while driving across the country. Cool. [via Powazek]
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When I was in London a few weeks back, I picked up the Sunday London Times and stumbled across the print version of Miss Abigail’s Time Warp Advice column. I knew I’d seen that column somewhere before but couldn’t place it. After checking the website, it clicked. If I remember correctly, I actually had brunch with Miss Abigail on Valentine’s Day a couple years ago. Bizarre.
For the record, I also was introduced to Miss Manners at a book reading by Deborah Eisenberg (my former thesis advisor) several years ago. Deborah just introduced her by her name (Judith Martin, not Miss Manners!). When we were seated and my companion nudged me in the ribs and said, “You know who that was, right? Miss Manners?” It’s just as well I didn’t recognize her; I probably would have done something like shout Miss Manners? Get out! and punched her on the shoulder. I was paranoid for the rest of the evening that I’d unwittingly picked my nose, used the sorbet spoon to ladle bacon grease on my mashed potatoes, or made some other breach of etiquette in front of her.
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Lawrence Lessig answers your questions on Slashdot. Lessig is a legal scholar and has been a vocal opponent of Congress’ recent attempts to tighten the screws on copyright in favor of copyright holders most of whom are big, rich Disneyesque corporations — and I don’t mean “Disneyeqsue” in the cute & cuddly sense. Good stuff here from Lessig.
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Thinking about the new Kevin Kelly book (see the previous entry) and the new economy got me ruminating over my thinking on it evolved. One turning point in my very limited cogitations on economics was a New Yorker article I read a few years ago. Thank God for Google. It only took me a few moments to figure out that it was a John Cassidy article, “The Force of an Idea,” from the Jan 12 1998 issue. (Unfortunately, it’s not online, so no link.)
The New Yorker article was about economist Brian Arthur and his idea of increasing returns aka network externalities. Brief layman’s summary: If I use ACME Soap the returns on my use of ACME Soap don’t increase if everyone else uses ACME Soap also — the soap isn’t any more effective or any more valuable for me if 10,000 or 10,000,000 people use it. In an information economy, though, that’s not true. My return may increase if more people use the same information product. So if I use AcmeOS, the returns on my use of AcmeOS increase if everyone else uses AcmeOS also — the OS is much more valuable if 10,000,000 people use the same OS. Which explains a lot of how Microsoft become a monopoly.
(One other thing I picked up in my Googling: apparently Cassidy’s article was way off the mark & Brian Arthur was not the economics wunderkind he was made out to be. Still, the concept of increasing returns of a network economy is really interesting.)
Prior to googling around, I suspected the article might have been written by Malcolm Gladwell, who is a terrific staff writer at the New Yorker. His articles are archived on Gladwell’s web site, and most are worth a read. But the Gladwell piece I was the essay “Clicks and Morter” about why a turn of the century (19th century, that is) tool with the ultra-hip name of the King Road Drag is actually the piece of technology that enabled e-commerce. Fascinating read. Gladwell is also author of another great book The Tipping Point based on a New Yorker article of the same name.
It’s also cool that Gladwell has his entire oeuvre online.
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Peterme.com has a link to What Is The Network Economy?, a brief essay by Peter Kaminski about the so-called new economy.
I didn’t find the short essay itself that interesting or challenging, but was struck by a moment of synchronicity. While book shopping this morning, I almost picked up a used copy of Kevin Kelly’s book, Out of Control: the Biology of New Machines, which is a terrific read. I didn’t buy it because I couldn’t remember if I already has a copy or not. (Often a problem when you have as many books as I do.) In the first paragraph of the essay, Kaminski refers to Kevin Kelly’s new book, New Rules for the New Economy. I haven’t read Kelly’s new book, but I’m going to have to now.
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Recently read:
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon. Pulitzer Prize winning story of two young Jewish comic book entrepeneurs in the Golden Age of comics … which, of course, happens to coincide with the Holocaust. One of the best books I’ve read in the last year or so. Absolutely worth your time: complex, entertaining, challenging, and a damn fine history of comic books to boot.
The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen. About an unravelling family at the endof the 90’s economic boom. National Book Award winner, I think. Yeah, the one that caused all the flap. Franzen apparently pulled a literary Babe Ruth, pointing to the academic outfield and claiming he was going to knock a Great American Novel out of the park. Corrections is his at bat.
My take: Get over yerself, Franzen. It falls into that category (which, actually, I greatly admire) of a novel that successfully combines “literary pretensions” (code for “complexity”) with a character-driven narrative and straightforward writing (other example purveyors: the aforementioned Chabon novel, anything by John Irving, the occasional Updike novel and the even more occasional Stephen King novella). It stands counter to the idea-driven narratives of authors like Don DeLillo and Thomas Pynchon or the stylistic tics/flourishes of authors like Toni Morrison or Don DeLillo. (Also some of my favorite authors, for the record.) The Corrections is good, but it’s not revolutionary, nor is it a home run. A strong double, that could have been a triple if the author was a gutsier runner. However, it is probably the first novel that I’ve read that really captured the tail end of the 90’s, and it’s dead-on in its rendition of fin-de-siecle suburban angst.
Naked by David Sedaris. Collection of personal essays that are supposed to be humourous. People have been urging me to read Sedaris for a while now, so before I went to the UK for a month I picked up two Sedaris books. The first one I read, Naked, was a disappointment, especially compared to Kavalier and Clay which I read — no, devoured — right after Sedaris’ book. If you want to read humorous essays, pick up David Foster Wallace’s A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again which is the only book to actually make me fall out of a chair laughing (in public, no less).
Currently reading or recently purchased:
Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. The other Sedaris collection I bought. As uninspiring as the first so far.
Anil’s Ghost by Michael Ondaatje. For a book club. I’m not an Ondaatje-head.
The Best American Short Stories 2001. Haven’t started yet.
War Fever by J.G. Ballard. Short stories. Haven’t started yet.
The Trouble With Principles by Stanley Fish. Fish is a legal scholar/literary theorist/philosopher who I find to be one of the most interesting and lucid thinkers writing today.
Books, Writing & Literature
Lately, I’ve been renewing my Scrabble addiction thanks to my boss, Kate, and to the Internet Scrabble Club. Kate and I were limited to matches with the mini Travel Scrabble set at the pub next door to the office, until I stumbled upon the ISC earlier this week. Now, I can be sitting at home (like yesterday) and she can be in the office, and I can still kick her lexicographically challenged butt. (Actually we’re split even on wins-losses and I’m ahead by one measly point in total scores, so it’s pretty competitive so far.)
Even better, you can play against the ISC computer, which is a damn sharp Scrabble player. Unfortunately, I can’t figure out where the hell it’s getting some of these words from. Whenever I challenge one of its crazy words, it wins the challenge. Unfortunately, the dictionary is built-in and you never see the interface. Hmmm……
I just found out that the 2001 World Scrabble Championships ended yesterday. I could have watched the games live on the Internet! Doh! But I can still replay all of the games in the tournament.
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